3 Comments

Thanks for helping to keep us all honest, Li. The real question about web3 with recent events with FTX is whether it's more like what Pets.com did for web1 ... or more like what Chernobyl did for nuclear power.

Going back to first principles questions, we still have to ask how valuable is it really to rid ourselves of trust third-party intermediaries. For thousands of years, business has been the business of relationships. To believe we can escape that is disruptive but also ripe for hubris.

I still have some gnawing skepticism about purely transactional business relationships for the future of humanity. "Invest in what you know", but also "who you know", right? And as SBF showed, there's still a lot of trust required behind our faith in trustless networks.

Is the future of business on the Internet really making Amazon.com more like Tor and the dark web? 14 years after Satoshi's white paper, and I don't feel enough time has been spent addressing this question.

Yes, better models of ownership on the Internet are definitely missing. But is that a universal paradigm change? Is that a business model for a handful of orgs? Or that just a feature for a limited subset of the Internet ... as P2P services such as Napster were?

web3 is getting an overly bad rap now. The human impulses to scheme and profit from regulatory failures is innate, regardless of the arena. So it's a good time to be reflective, look inward, and remind ourselves of ther value we're building and expecting to come from all the damage around us.

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Why do you suppose that a16z's Future publication failed? It's because you can't lie your way into creating a product that people actually need. As a Venture capitalist it's your job to support projects that meet real world needs not sell projects that aren't going to be useful or belong to tokens that are temporary.

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Enjoyed this, thanks for writing.

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